February 2026

My first job out of college was a management training program in a dental claims consulting organization called American Dental Examiners. When I grew up, I had a few cavities but overall, my oral health was very good. However, the vast number of claims I saw come in at ADE which contained full upper and lower dentures, “roundhouse bridgework,” multiple extractions, extensive periodontal surgery, etc. really opened my eyes to the oral health problems that existed. I have been in the dental industry ever since.

Throughout my career I have maintained the vision of needing to “do something” to address the problems I saw at ADE. During my time as SVP and COO at Delta Dental of NJ, I was on the board of the organization’s foundation and the need I saw further motivated me to become more involved. I have always focused on finding ways people, aided through the use of technology, can bring better solutions to the many problems our industry faces. When I formed BD Silverman Consulting (BDSC) almost 10 years ago, one core mission was to utilize data and technology to both improve access to care and how patients are treated. Teledentistry; Digitization; AI – the only thing that surprises me about these are how long it has taken the dental industry to embrace them. To your question of how I became involved with PCOH – that is easy. SKYGEN USA is client of BDSC. I have known Dr. Larry Paul at SKYGEN for a few years now. He became knowledgeable of the work I was doing with Virtual Dental Care and Dental.com, found out that I now lived in PA, and clearly said “you need to become involved with PCOH.” So, I connected with Helen, conferenced on teams, met her face-to-face for the first time at the SKYGEN conference this past May, and here I am. I attended my first PCOH conference in November which was an amazing experience.

I alluded to it before – how slow and reluctant dentistry is when it comes to adopting new technologies or ways of doing business. Teledentistry, for example, is an amazing tool for those who, for whatever reason, cannot go to the dentist. Through my work with Dental.com, at the end of a virtual visit with a dentist, we ask the patient a simple question: “If you utilized this service due to a dental emergency, which of the following options best describes what you would have done if this service was not available?” One of the response choices is “Visited the emergency room for dental concerns.” Can you believe that 29% indicated this is what they would have done? And another 30% chose the response “Delayed seeking dental care.” These numbers are astounding, especially as 100% of these patients have active commercial dental benefits. Another amazing stat from this analysis is that 22% of all visitors answer the survey. This is a remarkable response rate for survey, and especially for someone who has dental pain yet still takes the time after their virtual meeting with the dentist to answer a survey. And, by the way, patient satisfaction consistently rates 4.8 out of 5, so people want to use teledentistry and almost always have had a good experience. Yet, organized dentistry continues to fight the use of teledentistry by putting up roadblocks such as adopting rules and regulations with the State Board of Dentistry and/or through legislation that prohibit and/or vastly limit what can be done via teledentistry. It is remarkable because every dentist could use teledentistry, done securely of course, to enhance engagement with their own patients.

Both significantly reduce or even eliminate visits to the emergency room for dental care as well as equip ERs with tools whereby patients can virtually connect directly with a licensed dentist to get the help they need, at a significantly lower cost to the healthcare ecosystem. I cannot tell you who is doing this, but you can expect to soon see kiosks set up in certain pharmacies for store visitors to connect with a live dentist. Today, Dental.com has licensed dentists available 24/7 in 50 states + DC providing these services. And for those who have not heard of Dental.com, they are available to over 100 million members for payers such as Aetna, Cigna, Humana, MetLife, and United Concordia. These are of course commercial dental benefit members – so I strongly encourage all MCOs here in PA to get started with this as well.

When I am talking with someone and the lightbulb goes off – then making the concept reality. A quick example – I also work with a company called Firstgrin. If you have never heard of them or their founder, Dr. Ashely Lerman (a Pediatric dentist), I strongly encourage you to look her up on LinkedIn or Facebook or just visit www.yourfirstgrin.com. Anyhow, Firstgrin has a focus on pregnancy and the oral health of the expecting mom, both before birth as well as how to care for the baby’s oral health needs after the baby is born. But we know, with everything else going on, oral care is not top of mind for expecting moms. Lightbulb moment – connect Dental.com and Firstgrin, so dental visits for the expecting mom can be done virtually to educate her and take care of her unmet oral health needs so their newborn can be healthy, without the various conditions caused by poor oral health during pregnancy. And with that, Bright Start (www.brightstart.com) was born.

Spending time with family and playing golf, although I am not sure that most people would call what I do on the golf course "golf" 😊.